A moderately entertaining article about MySpace can be found here, but I'm going to give away its best line:
Last week, in the US, I saw an advert for a handheld gizmo using the slogan "It's not a cellphone: it's MySpace on the go." It's a terrifying first - a new gadget I know I'll never want to buy. I've never felt so lost.
I will say that I did relate (not surprisingly) to the first few sentences of the paragraph that follows, though.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
New Link
ifilm seems to care less about the whole copyright issue than YouTube, so here's another attempt at posting the Robot Chicken clip. Watch it while you can:
Friday, June 30, 2006
Why I Love Alan Moore
I realize that many of you out there reading Threshold have never read, and likely will never read, anything written by Alan Moore.
While I'm of the opinion that you are sadly missing out, I understand that issues of personal taste as well as prejudices against the form ("Comic books are for kids/are stupid and infantile/are not a valid medium for artistic expression," etc.) will prevent you from ever reading things like Watchmen or From Hell or Promethea, or any of the assorted wonderful works of art that Moore has produced in his extensive and prolific career.
This makes it nearly impossible for me to explain just why I love Alan Moore and all his works with a slavish fanboy devotion that borders on worshipfullness.
(And of course this entry is built on the assumption that you might actually wonder or care about the why of it)
So how do I go about providing an explanation?
I think this rather lengthy exchange (which is only an excerpt from a much larger correspondence which can be found here) between Dave Sim (who I will be writing a fairly in-depth entry about somewhere along the line. Short preview of the entry: Sim is a misogynistic nutjob) and Moore.
The verbose response that Moore provides to the (also verbose) question that Sim asks is quintessentially Alan Moore, full of erudition, philosophical questions, and the bearded one's characteristic sense of humor.
And yes, I know, as I've already pointed out, it's long, so those of you with short attention spans can feel free to skim or skip or do whatever it is that you do (if nothing else, at least read the last paragraph), and those of you who are just plain not interested (Duddy, I'm looking at you) can call it a miss. As for the rest of you (which at this point is probably just Scott, who already knows why I love Alan Moore), enjoy.
Dave Sim: One of the reasons I wanted to do this "chat" with you is — I know you don‘t read The Comics Journal faithfully anymore and I can’t say as I blame you (I often find myself wondering why I still read it) — there ‘s this Robert Cwildik fellow who went on a bit of a strange rant in the Journal about why the comic-book medium is unsuited to do large, complex works. Just as I was preparing myself to devour From Hell in its entirety he was on the Journal’s letters page saying that Cerebus is a "serious work but it isn’t realistic." Well, that’s water off a duck’s back but as I was reading From Hell — particularly that marvel-filled final volume — the thought came to me, "You, know, I’d bet that Cwildik fellow wouldn’t think this is realistic, either. "Interesting that what’s water off a duck‘s back to Dave Sim author was a knife in the ribs to Dave Sim fanboy. I was quite indignant on your behalf And I realised as I analysed the difference in viewpoints that the crux of the thing was; "What is and isn’t reality?" Personally, I find that work which functions on the level of mere "this is what happened, this is what they said, this is what it looked like" to be unsatisfying — or, at least, less satisfying. So, I thought maybe an informal dialogue between two thoughtful chaps who tend to perceive reality in terms of "wheels-within-larger-wheels-within-still-larger-wheels-within-wheels-so-large-you-could-vomit-contemplating-them" might serve as a counterpoint — an invigorating tonic — to alleviate the symptoms produced by the Journal’s cold-porridge diet of "a wheel is a circular frame of hard material, solid or spoked, that is capable of turning on an axis" (Gary Groth presumed to be the axis, of course). Or maybe we can just dispense with the ‘opposing viewpoint in this initial exchange and get right into the interesting and really interesting things you and Eddie accomplished in From Hell.
Alan Moore: Well, first off, I suppose I should briefly preface this by pointing out that my reasons for not following the Journal very closely of late are probably different to your own and aren’t necessarily born of any disenchantment with the magazine itself, per se. Despite its occasional forays into pointless sniping, manufactured slanging matches, and all the rest, it probably remains the most incisive magazine related to the comics field that is currently available. The lapse in my reading of the Journal and indeed all other publications in the same area come entirely from my own current sense of distance from the comics industry. Despite my abiding love of the medium, it is not my only interest or indeed even my major interest at the moment. Consequently, at a time when there are very few comics that I actually see or read, comics commentary tends to disappear from my reading list altogether. No criticism of anyone other than myself should be inferred from this.
Given the above, it probably comes as no surprise that I haven’t seen the article you speak of, but if your summary of its viewpoint is accurate, I don’t imagine I’d have had many thoughts about it one way or the other. I’m sure that these are someone’s genuine opinions, but opinion is surely a devalued currency at this juncture of the twentieth century, simply by virtue of the vast amount of it there is flooding the market. To assert that comics as a medium doesn’t lend itself to longer works seems pretty meaning-less, even if we ignore Our Cancer Year, Maus, Stuck Rubber Baby, and all the rest and assume that it’s true: that comics as a medium does not readily allow works of any great length, even if this were true, the proper response could only be "So what?" The commercial practicalities of the movie industry more or less guarantee that films above two hours long will be comparatively rare. This doesn’t seem to have proven a great restriction to the field of cinema. In painting, the simple laws of physics and human architecture more or less determine that a canvas, even, at its largest, will be not bigger than the average domestic wall. Really, it isn’t so much length as what you do with it. I’ve been telling myself this since puberty and have come to see that it contains great wisdom.
As regards the increasingly quaint notion of "Realism," a concept dependent upon the broader notion of "Reality," then I’m afraid that I’m equally at a loss. Traditional notions of realism in art, which are anyway in constant revision, would seem to be left floundering in the wake of Einstein and the quantum physicists that followed after him. The physicist Niels Bohr, while conducting particle experiments using the vats at the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen, famously remarked to the effect that all of our observations of the cosmos or the quanta can only be seen, in the last analysis, as observations of ourselves, of the processes of our own consciousness. This became known as "The Copenhagen Interpretation," and while I might quibble over the man’s choice of beers, I’m not inclined to argue with his basic theory.
The simple fact of things is that we can never directly perceive any such phenomenon as this putative "reality": all we can ever perceive is our own perceptions, with these perceptions assembled into a constantly updated mosaic of apprehensions (or misapprehensions) that we call reality. If, for example, we take a dramatic human event such as a murder, then what is the reality of the situation? Is it the forensic evidence and nothing more? Well, yeah, maybe. If we’re meat and nothing more, then I guess you could argue that forensics are the only reality in such a situation. If, on the other hand, there is more to us than meat and ballistics, then other considerations must surely be taken into account. What were the thoughts and feelings of the victim? Of the murderer? Of those who witnessed or were connected to the crime? Aren’t these a part, perhaps the major part of the reality of the event, even though they are subjective impressions? What of abstracts such as the murder’s sociological implications? What of its mythic or poetic meaning in the broader scheme of things?
These are all surely equally valid facets of reality. I suggest that if reality were genuinely a simple matter of forensics, ballistics, and gross physical mechanics, we’d all have things a fucking sight easier. The distressing or glorious truth is rather that our fantasies are real things. They exist, albeit in an immaterial realm beyond the reach of science or empirical investigation. They influence our behaviour and thus influence the material world, for better or worse. In effect, fantasy is a. massive component of reality and cannot really be discussed as a separate entity in itself.
Mervyn Peake’s sublime Gormenghast trilogy, sniffily excluded from the accepted canon of worthwhile English literature for reasons probably not dissimilar to those that you attribute to the Journal piece, is a portrait of the ritual-bound emotional dream life of England in the forties and fifties, a haunting and meaningful snapshot that could not have been formulated as anything but fantasy. If we are to exclude anything beyond the chain-link fence of traditional realism from that which we accept as serious and worthwhile art, then in one sublime stroke we shall have utterly gutted the entirety of world culture. Goodbye Swift, Rabelais, and all art or literature based upon a classical or mythological theme. Goodbye Pynchon, Burroughs, Blake. Wilde has to go, or at least Dorian Gray. Hawthorne for The Marble Faun. Henry James for The Turn of the Screw. As for M.R. James, W.H. Hodgson, Wells, Verne, Eddie Poe, and other similar genre-bound losers, they haven’t a hope. While we’re setting fire to the curtains, let’s not forget the utter lack of human, emotional, or conversational realism in most eighteenth-century literature, and torch that as well. Then we can presumably all wander up the same irrefutable real and gritty cul-de-sac as Hemingway and fellate our father’s Webley with as much verisimilitude as we can muster.
The idea that Art should, only ever be a mirror to reality has always seemed ass-backwards to me, given that Art is always and everywhere well-groomed and impeccably turned out, whereas Reality wears a pair of two-year-old Adidas trainers and a Toy Story T-shirt. As far as I’m concerned, it’s rather the job of reality to try and reflect Art. The purpose of Art is not to mirror reality, but to shape it by the imprints and aspirations that it leaves in the human mind. Anyway, enough about Art and Reality. Let’s talk about me.
While I'm of the opinion that you are sadly missing out, I understand that issues of personal taste as well as prejudices against the form ("Comic books are for kids/are stupid and infantile/are not a valid medium for artistic expression," etc.) will prevent you from ever reading things like Watchmen or From Hell or Promethea, or any of the assorted wonderful works of art that Moore has produced in his extensive and prolific career.
This makes it nearly impossible for me to explain just why I love Alan Moore and all his works with a slavish fanboy devotion that borders on worshipfullness.
(And of course this entry is built on the assumption that you might actually wonder or care about the why of it)
So how do I go about providing an explanation?
I think this rather lengthy exchange (which is only an excerpt from a much larger correspondence which can be found here) between Dave Sim (who I will be writing a fairly in-depth entry about somewhere along the line. Short preview of the entry: Sim is a misogynistic nutjob) and Moore.
The verbose response that Moore provides to the (also verbose) question that Sim asks is quintessentially Alan Moore, full of erudition, philosophical questions, and the bearded one's characteristic sense of humor.
And yes, I know, as I've already pointed out, it's long, so those of you with short attention spans can feel free to skim or skip or do whatever it is that you do (if nothing else, at least read the last paragraph), and those of you who are just plain not interested (Duddy, I'm looking at you) can call it a miss. As for the rest of you (which at this point is probably just Scott, who already knows why I love Alan Moore), enjoy.
Dave Sim: One of the reasons I wanted to do this "chat" with you is — I know you don‘t read The Comics Journal faithfully anymore and I can’t say as I blame you (I often find myself wondering why I still read it) — there ‘s this Robert Cwildik fellow who went on a bit of a strange rant in the Journal about why the comic-book medium is unsuited to do large, complex works. Just as I was preparing myself to devour From Hell in its entirety he was on the Journal’s letters page saying that Cerebus is a "serious work but it isn’t realistic." Well, that’s water off a duck’s back but as I was reading From Hell — particularly that marvel-filled final volume — the thought came to me, "You, know, I’d bet that Cwildik fellow wouldn’t think this is realistic, either. "Interesting that what’s water off a duck‘s back to Dave Sim author was a knife in the ribs to Dave Sim fanboy. I was quite indignant on your behalf And I realised as I analysed the difference in viewpoints that the crux of the thing was; "What is and isn’t reality?" Personally, I find that work which functions on the level of mere "this is what happened, this is what they said, this is what it looked like" to be unsatisfying — or, at least, less satisfying. So, I thought maybe an informal dialogue between two thoughtful chaps who tend to perceive reality in terms of "wheels-within-larger-wheels-within-still-larger-wheels-within-wheels-so-large-you-could-vomit-contemplating-them" might serve as a counterpoint — an invigorating tonic — to alleviate the symptoms produced by the Journal’s cold-porridge diet of "a wheel is a circular frame of hard material, solid or spoked, that is capable of turning on an axis" (Gary Groth presumed to be the axis, of course). Or maybe we can just dispense with the ‘opposing viewpoint in this initial exchange and get right into the interesting and really interesting things you and Eddie accomplished in From Hell.
Alan Moore: Well, first off, I suppose I should briefly preface this by pointing out that my reasons for not following the Journal very closely of late are probably different to your own and aren’t necessarily born of any disenchantment with the magazine itself, per se. Despite its occasional forays into pointless sniping, manufactured slanging matches, and all the rest, it probably remains the most incisive magazine related to the comics field that is currently available. The lapse in my reading of the Journal and indeed all other publications in the same area come entirely from my own current sense of distance from the comics industry. Despite my abiding love of the medium, it is not my only interest or indeed even my major interest at the moment. Consequently, at a time when there are very few comics that I actually see or read, comics commentary tends to disappear from my reading list altogether. No criticism of anyone other than myself should be inferred from this.
Given the above, it probably comes as no surprise that I haven’t seen the article you speak of, but if your summary of its viewpoint is accurate, I don’t imagine I’d have had many thoughts about it one way or the other. I’m sure that these are someone’s genuine opinions, but opinion is surely a devalued currency at this juncture of the twentieth century, simply by virtue of the vast amount of it there is flooding the market. To assert that comics as a medium doesn’t lend itself to longer works seems pretty meaning-less, even if we ignore Our Cancer Year, Maus, Stuck Rubber Baby, and all the rest and assume that it’s true: that comics as a medium does not readily allow works of any great length, even if this were true, the proper response could only be "So what?" The commercial practicalities of the movie industry more or less guarantee that films above two hours long will be comparatively rare. This doesn’t seem to have proven a great restriction to the field of cinema. In painting, the simple laws of physics and human architecture more or less determine that a canvas, even, at its largest, will be not bigger than the average domestic wall. Really, it isn’t so much length as what you do with it. I’ve been telling myself this since puberty and have come to see that it contains great wisdom.
As regards the increasingly quaint notion of "Realism," a concept dependent upon the broader notion of "Reality," then I’m afraid that I’m equally at a loss. Traditional notions of realism in art, which are anyway in constant revision, would seem to be left floundering in the wake of Einstein and the quantum physicists that followed after him. The physicist Niels Bohr, while conducting particle experiments using the vats at the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen, famously remarked to the effect that all of our observations of the cosmos or the quanta can only be seen, in the last analysis, as observations of ourselves, of the processes of our own consciousness. This became known as "The Copenhagen Interpretation," and while I might quibble over the man’s choice of beers, I’m not inclined to argue with his basic theory.
The simple fact of things is that we can never directly perceive any such phenomenon as this putative "reality": all we can ever perceive is our own perceptions, with these perceptions assembled into a constantly updated mosaic of apprehensions (or misapprehensions) that we call reality. If, for example, we take a dramatic human event such as a murder, then what is the reality of the situation? Is it the forensic evidence and nothing more? Well, yeah, maybe. If we’re meat and nothing more, then I guess you could argue that forensics are the only reality in such a situation. If, on the other hand, there is more to us than meat and ballistics, then other considerations must surely be taken into account. What were the thoughts and feelings of the victim? Of the murderer? Of those who witnessed or were connected to the crime? Aren’t these a part, perhaps the major part of the reality of the event, even though they are subjective impressions? What of abstracts such as the murder’s sociological implications? What of its mythic or poetic meaning in the broader scheme of things?
These are all surely equally valid facets of reality. I suggest that if reality were genuinely a simple matter of forensics, ballistics, and gross physical mechanics, we’d all have things a fucking sight easier. The distressing or glorious truth is rather that our fantasies are real things. They exist, albeit in an immaterial realm beyond the reach of science or empirical investigation. They influence our behaviour and thus influence the material world, for better or worse. In effect, fantasy is a. massive component of reality and cannot really be discussed as a separate entity in itself.
Mervyn Peake’s sublime Gormenghast trilogy, sniffily excluded from the accepted canon of worthwhile English literature for reasons probably not dissimilar to those that you attribute to the Journal piece, is a portrait of the ritual-bound emotional dream life of England in the forties and fifties, a haunting and meaningful snapshot that could not have been formulated as anything but fantasy. If we are to exclude anything beyond the chain-link fence of traditional realism from that which we accept as serious and worthwhile art, then in one sublime stroke we shall have utterly gutted the entirety of world culture. Goodbye Swift, Rabelais, and all art or literature based upon a classical or mythological theme. Goodbye Pynchon, Burroughs, Blake. Wilde has to go, or at least Dorian Gray. Hawthorne for The Marble Faun. Henry James for The Turn of the Screw. As for M.R. James, W.H. Hodgson, Wells, Verne, Eddie Poe, and other similar genre-bound losers, they haven’t a hope. While we’re setting fire to the curtains, let’s not forget the utter lack of human, emotional, or conversational realism in most eighteenth-century literature, and torch that as well. Then we can presumably all wander up the same irrefutable real and gritty cul-de-sac as Hemingway and fellate our father’s Webley with as much verisimilitude as we can muster.
The idea that Art should, only ever be a mirror to reality has always seemed ass-backwards to me, given that Art is always and everywhere well-groomed and impeccably turned out, whereas Reality wears a pair of two-year-old Adidas trainers and a Toy Story T-shirt. As far as I’m concerned, it’s rather the job of reality to try and reflect Art. The purpose of Art is not to mirror reality, but to shape it by the imprints and aspirations that it leaves in the human mind. Anyway, enough about Art and Reality. Let’s talk about me.
How To Become A Super Hero
Forbes.com has an article that explores the methods by which real people can go about becoming super heroes.
To sum up the article (which you can read here), you need a lot of money and really low expectations.
The " a lot of money" part is directly in line with my long-stated position that if I were to ever become a billionaire I would devote a significant portion of my fortune to research into methods for giving me super powers.
The rest of my fortune would be spent on my island home, called "Supermanor," state of the art electronics gizmos, and, naturally, doing two chicks at the same time.
To sum up the article (which you can read here), you need a lot of money and really low expectations.
The " a lot of money" part is directly in line with my long-stated position that if I were to ever become a billionaire I would devote a significant portion of my fortune to research into methods for giving me super powers.
The rest of my fortune would be spent on my island home, called "Supermanor," state of the art electronics gizmos, and, naturally, doing two chicks at the same time.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
My Last Thursday
Last night, largely motivated by boredom, I decided to give the whole eharmony.com thing another shot, figuring that maybe something has changed since my last attempt, back when the personality-based matching system demonstrated that I’m completely incompatible with other human beings.
Guess what? Nothing has changed.
I don’t know that it would have mattered if anything had. I mean, I doubt that I would have actually signed up for the service if there had been a suitable match for me anywhere in this country, but I was curious to see if maybe there was someone out there, somewhere.
Oh well.
It’s sunny again today, but the thunderstorms are supposed to start back up sometime this afternoon, leading to still more flooding in the area.
So that’s fun.
This weekend will find me once again flying solo, as Scott will be out recovering from surgery.
Fortunately, as we’re making the change to the new shift, I only have to work two days.
Of course, he’ll probably be out next weekend, too, but that’s more than a week away, so I’m not going to bother worrying about my future boredom.
The week of the 10th I’ll be traveling to Tyson’s Corner every day for my Red Hat class, which will culminate in me failing the RHCT exam.
The following week I’ll be heading back to Michigan for about a week.
Last week when we were having lunch Kathleen and I were discussing my upcoming trip and the whole 100th anniversary thing for my grade school.
She asked me, “Are you going to get a haircut?”
This was, of course, a non-too subtle way of telling me that I need to get a haircut.
She went on to mention, as she has on more than one occasion, that she thinks I look better when my hair is really short.
Then she added, as she usually does, that I don’t have to have my hair done a certain way just because she likes it.
Immediately after saying that she went on to say that she thinks I should dye my hair.
I’m in agreement with her about the hair length thing (I’m just too lazy to get a haircut), but I’m not so keen on the notion of coloring my hair to try to cover up the gray.
I like to say that I’ve earned my gray hairs, and that it makes me look distinguished (or as my dad likes to say, extinguished), but the fact of the matter is that coloring my hair strikes me as an act of vanity that, quite frankly, I have no business engaging in.
After all, what do I have to be vain about?
And what difference would it make anyway?
Before the dye job
Random Chick: Eww, that guy with the gray hair is weird looking.
After the dye job
Random Chick: Eww, that guy with the brownish-blonde hair is weird looking.
Further, I imagine the end result of the coloring would look unnatural, detracting even further from my looks.
Random Chick: Eww, that guy with the unnatural-looking brownish-blonde hair is really weird looking.
Yeah, I know, it’s a fatalistic and self-deprecating attitude for me to take, but hello, this is me we’re talking about, so that shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise.
It’s pretty much that attitude that’s made it damn near impossible for me to get myself motivated about exercising.
Even if I were to get lean and muscular, would it really matter? I mean, have you seen those pictures of Carrot Top all buffed up? The guy is ripped…but he’s still freakin’ Carrot Top, so it doesn’t make a bit of difference.
As for the health benefits, meh. I mean, I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a heart attack somewhere along the line no matter what, and back when I was exercising regularly I didn’t really feel any advantage. Mainly my feet hurt from walking all of the time and my muscles were invariably stiff and sore.
Still, I do keep engaging in my half-assed attempts at exercise in the vain (this kind of vain does apply to my life) hope that I’ll somehow manage to make the transition from Endomorph to Mesomorph and that I’ll actually benefit in some fashion from having done so.
Today has been largely uneventful. I decided that I needed to go to Wal-Mart, and before doing that I stopped at the Dulles Town Center to get lunch at the food court.
After eating I walked to the book store and was enraged to find that while the manga section takes up an entire wall plus three additional sections on a free-standing shelf, regular non-manga graphic novels get one section on the shelf.
Over at his blog Neil Gaiman mentioned attending a panel on Graphic Novels in which manga was almost the sole focus.
In his words:
Also attended (as an audience member) a panel for librarians on Graphic Novels, which left me with the distinct feeling that, if I had been a librarian and had known nothing about what was out there in graphic novels and gone to that panel for information, I would have come away with the impression that most graphic novels are manga. Which seemed to do a disservice to the huge range of graphic novels out there -- the panellists were very well-informed and articulate, but only Jackie Estrada in her initial talk about what was out there seemed to be talking about anything that wasn't manga. And when a Japanese librarian got up and asked pointedly whether there were any other kinds of more respectable graphic novels than the boy-love manga the panel had been talking about, they told her about the educational manga that were now available in the US, as if there weren't any other educational or non-fiction graphic novels out there. Good intentions but, sitting in the audience, it felt a bit blinkered. I felt the same way I would have done if all they'd talked about was superhero comics. Good but I'd hoped for much more.
*Sigh*
On a less depressing, though only slightly less geeky note, there are probably many of you out there unfamiliar with Robot Chicken, a skit comedy series that’s part of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network.
Co-created by Seth Green, the show features stop-motion animation using clay models, toys, and action figures, and features some of the best satirical content out there.
I’ll leave you on this, my last non-workday Thursday, with this example of the show’s brilliant sense of humor, a satirical look at Star Wars featuring Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane as the voice of the Emperor. Enjoy, and have a good weekend.
Guess what? Nothing has changed.
I don’t know that it would have mattered if anything had. I mean, I doubt that I would have actually signed up for the service if there had been a suitable match for me anywhere in this country, but I was curious to see if maybe there was someone out there, somewhere.
Oh well.
It’s sunny again today, but the thunderstorms are supposed to start back up sometime this afternoon, leading to still more flooding in the area.
So that’s fun.
This weekend will find me once again flying solo, as Scott will be out recovering from surgery.
Fortunately, as we’re making the change to the new shift, I only have to work two days.
Of course, he’ll probably be out next weekend, too, but that’s more than a week away, so I’m not going to bother worrying about my future boredom.
The week of the 10th I’ll be traveling to Tyson’s Corner every day for my Red Hat class, which will culminate in me failing the RHCT exam.
The following week I’ll be heading back to Michigan for about a week.
Last week when we were having lunch Kathleen and I were discussing my upcoming trip and the whole 100th anniversary thing for my grade school.
She asked me, “Are you going to get a haircut?”
This was, of course, a non-too subtle way of telling me that I need to get a haircut.
She went on to mention, as she has on more than one occasion, that she thinks I look better when my hair is really short.
Then she added, as she usually does, that I don’t have to have my hair done a certain way just because she likes it.
Immediately after saying that she went on to say that she thinks I should dye my hair.
I’m in agreement with her about the hair length thing (I’m just too lazy to get a haircut), but I’m not so keen on the notion of coloring my hair to try to cover up the gray.
I like to say that I’ve earned my gray hairs, and that it makes me look distinguished (or as my dad likes to say, extinguished), but the fact of the matter is that coloring my hair strikes me as an act of vanity that, quite frankly, I have no business engaging in.
After all, what do I have to be vain about?
And what difference would it make anyway?
Before the dye job
Random Chick: Eww, that guy with the gray hair is weird looking.
After the dye job
Random Chick: Eww, that guy with the brownish-blonde hair is weird looking.
Further, I imagine the end result of the coloring would look unnatural, detracting even further from my looks.
Random Chick: Eww, that guy with the unnatural-looking brownish-blonde hair is really weird looking.
Yeah, I know, it’s a fatalistic and self-deprecating attitude for me to take, but hello, this is me we’re talking about, so that shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise.
It’s pretty much that attitude that’s made it damn near impossible for me to get myself motivated about exercising.
Even if I were to get lean and muscular, would it really matter? I mean, have you seen those pictures of Carrot Top all buffed up? The guy is ripped…but he’s still freakin’ Carrot Top, so it doesn’t make a bit of difference.
As for the health benefits, meh. I mean, I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a heart attack somewhere along the line no matter what, and back when I was exercising regularly I didn’t really feel any advantage. Mainly my feet hurt from walking all of the time and my muscles were invariably stiff and sore.
Still, I do keep engaging in my half-assed attempts at exercise in the vain (this kind of vain does apply to my life) hope that I’ll somehow manage to make the transition from Endomorph to Mesomorph and that I’ll actually benefit in some fashion from having done so.
Today has been largely uneventful. I decided that I needed to go to Wal-Mart, and before doing that I stopped at the Dulles Town Center to get lunch at the food court.
After eating I walked to the book store and was enraged to find that while the manga section takes up an entire wall plus three additional sections on a free-standing shelf, regular non-manga graphic novels get one section on the shelf.
Over at his blog Neil Gaiman mentioned attending a panel on Graphic Novels in which manga was almost the sole focus.
In his words:
Also attended (as an audience member) a panel for librarians on Graphic Novels, which left me with the distinct feeling that, if I had been a librarian and had known nothing about what was out there in graphic novels and gone to that panel for information, I would have come away with the impression that most graphic novels are manga. Which seemed to do a disservice to the huge range of graphic novels out there -- the panellists were very well-informed and articulate, but only Jackie Estrada in her initial talk about what was out there seemed to be talking about anything that wasn't manga. And when a Japanese librarian got up and asked pointedly whether there were any other kinds of more respectable graphic novels than the boy-love manga the panel had been talking about, they told her about the educational manga that were now available in the US, as if there weren't any other educational or non-fiction graphic novels out there. Good intentions but, sitting in the audience, it felt a bit blinkered. I felt the same way I would have done if all they'd talked about was superhero comics. Good but I'd hoped for much more.
*Sigh*
On a less depressing, though only slightly less geeky note, there are probably many of you out there unfamiliar with Robot Chicken, a skit comedy series that’s part of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network.
Co-created by Seth Green, the show features stop-motion animation using clay models, toys, and action figures, and features some of the best satirical content out there.
I’ll leave you on this, my last non-workday Thursday, with this example of the show’s brilliant sense of humor, a satirical look at Star Wars featuring Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane as the voice of the Emperor. Enjoy, and have a good weekend.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Pointless Thoughts On Xenosexuality
Though I don’t think that it’s legitimately an issue to discuss, since, as mentioned, the supposed subtext (outside of the costume) didn’t exist, I couldn’t help but find myself thinking about the topic of Superman’s supposed homosexuality.
A question occurred to me: given that, despite outward appearances, he is not human, and further is the only surviving member of his species, is it even possible for him to be a homosexual?
Further, does the fact that he gravitates toward human females actually make him heterosexual?
From a certain perspective, given the relative differences in evolutionary advancement having sex with any human – male or female – could be considered bestiality.
Just a thought.
Author Larry Niven – who actually wrote an infamous essay about the mechanics of Superman mating with a human female entitled Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex – uses the term rishathra to describe sexual congress between members of different sentient species.
Of course, the notion of rishathra is predicated on the assumption that the species would not be able to actually breed, therefore making it a non-reproductive act performed simply for pleasure, as a means of formalizing treaties, or for various other reasons not related to procreation.
After all, the existence of compatible parts doesn’t necessarily mean that breeding can occur. If reproductive sexual intercourse is not possible between a Kryptonian and a human, is orientation even an issue?
Of course, if it is possible, then it follows that despite his evolutionary advancements, Superman would technically qualify as a viable male partner for a human female, thus making an inclination towards the female of the species the more “natural” orientation, particularly given that, as the last of his kind, his biological imperative to reproduce is considerably stronger than his human male counterparts.
I suppose you could say that it’s as much stronger than a human males imperative as his physical strength is compared to a normal man’s.
As an aside, looking at things solely in terms of the genetics, every woman with an ounce of sense should be vying for his seed, as his genes are superior to those of every other male.
Anyway, I was just pointlessly thinking about the implications of referring to an alien as a homosexual.
Given that in the comics he is married to a woman and does engaged in what can be considered heterosexual (his alien nature aside) sexual acts with said woman and does not demonstrate an attraction to men or engage in sexual activities with men, he is clearly not gay.
If anything, General Zod is the gay one. I mean, you think Superman’s outfit is fruity, check out his Mr. Fabulous with his Fag Hag and his big, dumb butch. Further, he was portrayed in the movie by a guy who went on to appear in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
And why do you think he got sentenced to the Phantom Zone/Retarded Floating Mirror That Someone Should Be Punished For Coming Up With in the first place? Hello? He was in the military. Even Krypton hadn’t evolved beyond the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
Plus, why do you think he was so keen to have the son of Jor-El “kneel before Zod” anyway?
Of course, I recognize that the reality of the situation (if there can be said to be such a thing) is that most people aren’t saying that Superman, or Batman, or Aquaman (well, maybe not Aquaman), or whoever is literally gay, but that these characters are metaphorically or allegorically gay, so that they are presented as being as being straight (barring some truly bizarre moments of writerly naiveté or even prankserism in the Golden and Silver Age, most of which only raise eyebrows when viewed in hindsight with a cynical eye) isn’t actually a consideration.
That Superman doesn’t actually smoke pole, you might say, if, like me, you wanted to be crude about it, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t smoke pole via a wink wink and a nudge nudge.
So, I say whatever. If you really want to spend time tacking on gay themes thought jaded viewings of stories from simpler times written for a simpler audience, go ahead and waste your time, though I would submit that you might be better served to dedicate your time to examining the increasing (though still admittedly small) number of characters that have actual gay themes.
After all, changing times have made it possible for (at least some) characters to come out of the closet. You don’t have to look for the hidden (and often imaginary) symbology; you can actually see it explicitly stated.
Like I said earlier, just a thought.
On the other side of things, personally, I think that most of the gay characters out there are actually straight. The new Batwoman being a lesbian? It’s just a cover. She’s totally a closeted straight chick….
I forgot to mention one other thing I did actually like about Superman Returns: the flying.
Not just the whizzing along at tremendous speeds and making sonic booms, but the gentle floating. There were a lot of scenes of him just taking to the air without putting on a big production. No taking a few steps or getting a running start, just straight up floating up into the air as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which, for him, it is.
Today it actually stopped raining and we had some sunshine. It didn’t last, as we eventually got a few downpours and some rumblings of thunder, but I think it managed to dry up a little bit out there.
Not that it really mattered to me, as I didn’t do a goddamn thing all day.
I pretty much just sat around and read (Angels & Demons for those of you wondering) all day long.
As a result of my indolence I really don’t have much else to report, so I’ll just leave you with this thought:
…
….
Hmm. You think you could do me a favor? Come up with your own thought. I got nothing.
Thanks.
A question occurred to me: given that, despite outward appearances, he is not human, and further is the only surviving member of his species, is it even possible for him to be a homosexual?
Further, does the fact that he gravitates toward human females actually make him heterosexual?
From a certain perspective, given the relative differences in evolutionary advancement having sex with any human – male or female – could be considered bestiality.
Just a thought.
Author Larry Niven – who actually wrote an infamous essay about the mechanics of Superman mating with a human female entitled Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex – uses the term rishathra to describe sexual congress between members of different sentient species.
Of course, the notion of rishathra is predicated on the assumption that the species would not be able to actually breed, therefore making it a non-reproductive act performed simply for pleasure, as a means of formalizing treaties, or for various other reasons not related to procreation.
After all, the existence of compatible parts doesn’t necessarily mean that breeding can occur. If reproductive sexual intercourse is not possible between a Kryptonian and a human, is orientation even an issue?
Of course, if it is possible, then it follows that despite his evolutionary advancements, Superman would technically qualify as a viable male partner for a human female, thus making an inclination towards the female of the species the more “natural” orientation, particularly given that, as the last of his kind, his biological imperative to reproduce is considerably stronger than his human male counterparts.
I suppose you could say that it’s as much stronger than a human males imperative as his physical strength is compared to a normal man’s.
As an aside, looking at things solely in terms of the genetics, every woman with an ounce of sense should be vying for his seed, as his genes are superior to those of every other male.
Anyway, I was just pointlessly thinking about the implications of referring to an alien as a homosexual.
Given that in the comics he is married to a woman and does engaged in what can be considered heterosexual (his alien nature aside) sexual acts with said woman and does not demonstrate an attraction to men or engage in sexual activities with men, he is clearly not gay.
If anything, General Zod is the gay one. I mean, you think Superman’s outfit is fruity, check out his Mr. Fabulous with his Fag Hag and his big, dumb butch. Further, he was portrayed in the movie by a guy who went on to appear in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
And why do you think he got sentenced to the Phantom Zone/Retarded Floating Mirror That Someone Should Be Punished For Coming Up With in the first place? Hello? He was in the military. Even Krypton hadn’t evolved beyond the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
Plus, why do you think he was so keen to have the son of Jor-El “kneel before Zod” anyway?
Of course, I recognize that the reality of the situation (if there can be said to be such a thing) is that most people aren’t saying that Superman, or Batman, or Aquaman (well, maybe not Aquaman), or whoever is literally gay, but that these characters are metaphorically or allegorically gay, so that they are presented as being as being straight (barring some truly bizarre moments of writerly naiveté or even prankserism in the Golden and Silver Age, most of which only raise eyebrows when viewed in hindsight with a cynical eye) isn’t actually a consideration.
That Superman doesn’t actually smoke pole, you might say, if, like me, you wanted to be crude about it, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t smoke pole via a wink wink and a nudge nudge.
So, I say whatever. If you really want to spend time tacking on gay themes thought jaded viewings of stories from simpler times written for a simpler audience, go ahead and waste your time, though I would submit that you might be better served to dedicate your time to examining the increasing (though still admittedly small) number of characters that have actual gay themes.
After all, changing times have made it possible for (at least some) characters to come out of the closet. You don’t have to look for the hidden (and often imaginary) symbology; you can actually see it explicitly stated.
Like I said earlier, just a thought.
On the other side of things, personally, I think that most of the gay characters out there are actually straight. The new Batwoman being a lesbian? It’s just a cover. She’s totally a closeted straight chick….
I forgot to mention one other thing I did actually like about Superman Returns: the flying.
Not just the whizzing along at tremendous speeds and making sonic booms, but the gentle floating. There were a lot of scenes of him just taking to the air without putting on a big production. No taking a few steps or getting a running start, just straight up floating up into the air as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which, for him, it is.
Today it actually stopped raining and we had some sunshine. It didn’t last, as we eventually got a few downpours and some rumblings of thunder, but I think it managed to dry up a little bit out there.
Not that it really mattered to me, as I didn’t do a goddamn thing all day.
I pretty much just sat around and read (Angels & Demons for those of you wondering) all day long.
As a result of my indolence I really don’t have much else to report, so I’ll just leave you with this thought:
…
….
Hmm. You think you could do me a favor? Come up with your own thought. I got nothing.
Thanks.
Oh Yeah!
On the topic of comic book movies that don't suck, the trailer for Spider-Man 3 played before the movie started.
Looks like it will kick a tremendous amount of ass.
(Also caught the trailer for Ghost Rider back when I saw X3, which actually makes me want to see it. Just thought I should mention it, since I've kept forgetting to do so.)
Looks like it will kick a tremendous amount of ass.
(Also caught the trailer for Ghost Rider back when I saw X3, which actually makes me want to see it. Just thought I should mention it, since I've kept forgetting to do so.)
Some Quick Thoughts On The Movie
While pretty much all of my objections to the movie stand, I have to say that I didn't hate it quite as much as I thought I would.
Scott has some thoughts on it that pretty much mirror mine, and, like him, I don't want to get into any spoilers, so there's not too much I can say about it.
(Also, it's late, so I'll probably crash soon)
There were some pretty amazing action sequences, and the tone of the movie wasn't quite as campy as the originals (not having Jackie Cooper play Perry White made a big difference).
Beyond the costume, I don't really know how anyone could get any sort of gay subtext out of the movie. It simply wasn't there.
As for the costume, I did like the muted, darker blue, but the maroon cape, boots, and hot pants, and the repetition of the S shield (on his belt and his boots, but not on his cape, which is the only place it should be repeated) just ruined it, as did the fact that it looked kind of like it was made out of a basketball.
The story, minus some bothersome elements, had potential, but it really just failed to hold together, and those elements that bothered me REALLY bothered me.
In fact, the basic premise of the story is so fundamentally flawed: Superman would not abandon the Earth for five years for any reason, and certainly not for the frivolous reason provided.
One other element (beyond Lois having a kid) that really bothered me was the fact that at one point Superman's actions directly lead to the deaths of some people. Sure, they're bad people, but that's not the point.
(In a way, his actions indirectly lead to the death of yet another person. And that's saying nothing about the countless deaths that no doubt occurred when he abandoned the fucking planet for five years, which he could have prevented if he'd stuck around.)
Other than that, I just have a couple of observations.
Lois (Kate Bosworth is a beautiful girl, and she did a decent job, but she's just too young to be playing Lois at the stage in her life she's at during the movie) certainly got knocked around a lot. Physically and emotionally, as Superman was, well, kind of a dick to her (though there is a long history of that in the comics). Though I despise the basic concept of the story, he should have accepted the fact that she moved on and nobly (given that nobility is pretty much built into his character) stepped aside rather than using his powers to stalk her and then drop back into her life in such a way that it sets her into an emotional tailspin.
One piece of advice I'd give to Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey wasn't quite as over the top as I was afraid he might be) is that if he's going to have ditzy gun moll type chicks in his life he should probably make sure that they'll be cool with him engaging in acts of mass murder. I mean, you might want to ask that question in the interviewing process as there's a good chance it might come up somewhere along the line.
WTF was Clark doing in a bar having a beer with Jimmy???? No. Fucking. Way.
I did like the fact that they had a scene of him basking in sunlight to recharge himself.
The CGI during the opening title sequences looked like it was done sometime in the early 90s. You couldn't drop a little more money and jazz them up a little?
Oh, and that little "homage" to the original movie about flying being the safest way to travel? It was funny in 1978. In 2006 it seemed desperate and contrived, particularly given that it was supposed to be a sequel.
I did approve of the nod to John Byrne's Man of Steel, though.
And that, I think, is more than enough for one night.
I'll no doubt have more random rants/observations in the days to come.
Scott has some thoughts on it that pretty much mirror mine, and, like him, I don't want to get into any spoilers, so there's not too much I can say about it.
(Also, it's late, so I'll probably crash soon)
There were some pretty amazing action sequences, and the tone of the movie wasn't quite as campy as the originals (not having Jackie Cooper play Perry White made a big difference).
Beyond the costume, I don't really know how anyone could get any sort of gay subtext out of the movie. It simply wasn't there.
As for the costume, I did like the muted, darker blue, but the maroon cape, boots, and hot pants, and the repetition of the S shield (on his belt and his boots, but not on his cape, which is the only place it should be repeated) just ruined it, as did the fact that it looked kind of like it was made out of a basketball.
The story, minus some bothersome elements, had potential, but it really just failed to hold together, and those elements that bothered me REALLY bothered me.
In fact, the basic premise of the story is so fundamentally flawed: Superman would not abandon the Earth for five years for any reason, and certainly not for the frivolous reason provided.
One other element (beyond Lois having a kid) that really bothered me was the fact that at one point Superman's actions directly lead to the deaths of some people. Sure, they're bad people, but that's not the point.
(In a way, his actions indirectly lead to the death of yet another person. And that's saying nothing about the countless deaths that no doubt occurred when he abandoned the fucking planet for five years, which he could have prevented if he'd stuck around.)
Other than that, I just have a couple of observations.
Lois (Kate Bosworth is a beautiful girl, and she did a decent job, but she's just too young to be playing Lois at the stage in her life she's at during the movie) certainly got knocked around a lot. Physically and emotionally, as Superman was, well, kind of a dick to her (though there is a long history of that in the comics). Though I despise the basic concept of the story, he should have accepted the fact that she moved on and nobly (given that nobility is pretty much built into his character) stepped aside rather than using his powers to stalk her and then drop back into her life in such a way that it sets her into an emotional tailspin.
One piece of advice I'd give to Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey wasn't quite as over the top as I was afraid he might be) is that if he's going to have ditzy gun moll type chicks in his life he should probably make sure that they'll be cool with him engaging in acts of mass murder. I mean, you might want to ask that question in the interviewing process as there's a good chance it might come up somewhere along the line.
WTF was Clark doing in a bar having a beer with Jimmy???? No. Fucking. Way.
I did like the fact that they had a scene of him basking in sunlight to recharge himself.
The CGI during the opening title sequences looked like it was done sometime in the early 90s. You couldn't drop a little more money and jazz them up a little?
Oh, and that little "homage" to the original movie about flying being the safest way to travel? It was funny in 1978. In 2006 it seemed desperate and contrived, particularly given that it was supposed to be a sequel.
I did approve of the nod to John Byrne's Man of Steel, though.
And that, I think, is more than enough for one night.
I'll no doubt have more random rants/observations in the days to come.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
It CAN Rain All The Time...And Apparently It's Raining Men
The rain just keeps falling, and the forecast says it won't stop until Friday.
Anyone out there who's in good with God, could you ask Him to knock it the fuck off? Enough is enough already...
I was reading Peter David's blog and found an entry (and skimmed through the comments) about the whole "gay thing" with the new Superman movie.
In case you didn't know, there are some people who feel that the name of the movie should be Superman Comes Out rather than Superman Returns.
The primary reason this notion is floating around is because of an article that ran in The Advocate, and is largely based on the fact that, apparently, director Brian Singer himself is gay.
(I hadn't known that when I made the Richard Donner blowjob comment, by the way)
I think what lends fuel to the fire is just how gay those too-tight little maroon shorts on the costume are.
Well, that and the supposed homosexual subtext to the Clark/Lex relationship on Smallville.
(I can see how people might be able to impose that viewpoint onto the show, but I'm of the opinion that it's mostly in their heads. Clark isn't gay, he's just an idiot.)
Mainly, though, I think it stems from the desire that some people have to ascribe homosexual subtext to everything.
But whatever. If people want to think that he's gay, go ahead. Not only does it not make it so, it really doesn't matter because the person in the movie is decidedly not Superman.
Would I feel differently about Superman if he were gay? Probably not, but after nearly 70 years of established history that (mostly, despite what some of the old covers over at Superdickery suggest) that says otherwise, it seems unlikely that he is anyway.
That is, of course, unless he got exposed to Pink Kryptonite somewhere along the way...
(Note to non-comics fans: that last bit was inside joke that probably only Scott will get, and would take too long to explain.)
Anyone out there who's in good with God, could you ask Him to knock it the fuck off? Enough is enough already...
I was reading Peter David's blog and found an entry (and skimmed through the comments) about the whole "gay thing" with the new Superman movie.
In case you didn't know, there are some people who feel that the name of the movie should be Superman Comes Out rather than Superman Returns.
The primary reason this notion is floating around is because of an article that ran in The Advocate, and is largely based on the fact that, apparently, director Brian Singer himself is gay.
(I hadn't known that when I made the Richard Donner blowjob comment, by the way)
I think what lends fuel to the fire is just how gay those too-tight little maroon shorts on the costume are.
Well, that and the supposed homosexual subtext to the Clark/Lex relationship on Smallville.
(I can see how people might be able to impose that viewpoint onto the show, but I'm of the opinion that it's mostly in their heads. Clark isn't gay, he's just an idiot.)
Mainly, though, I think it stems from the desire that some people have to ascribe homosexual subtext to everything.
But whatever. If people want to think that he's gay, go ahead. Not only does it not make it so, it really doesn't matter because the person in the movie is decidedly not Superman.
Would I feel differently about Superman if he were gay? Probably not, but after nearly 70 years of established history that (mostly, despite what some of the old covers over at Superdickery suggest) that says otherwise, it seems unlikely that he is anyway.
That is, of course, unless he got exposed to Pink Kryptonite somewhere along the way...
(Note to non-comics fans: that last bit was inside joke that probably only Scott will get, and would take too long to explain.)
Stamp-ing Out The Lack Of Traffic To My Site
Last week I mentioned that Zazzle.com lets you create your own stamps and that I had some made featuring the Heroic Portraits logo.
Check them out:
Pretty cool, though kind of expensive (about $21 all told), and not as convenient as buying stamps from an ATM, but it'll put the Heroic Portraits logo and URL in front of a lot ouf eyes, which I hope will actually help. Of course, things can't actually get worse in terms of the amount of traffic the site is getting (or the number of actual commissions I've gotten).
Unless, of course, there's a way for sites to get negative traffic...
Check them out:
Pretty cool, though kind of expensive (about $21 all told), and not as convenient as buying stamps from an ATM, but it'll put the Heroic Portraits logo and URL in front of a lot ouf eyes, which I hope will actually help. Of course, things can't actually get worse in terms of the amount of traffic the site is getting (or the number of actual commissions I've gotten).
Unless, of course, there's a way for sites to get negative traffic...
Threshold Returns
Okay, you had to know it wouldn’t last.
After all, who wants to read about my life being a series of non-events that inspire impotent rage and my half-baked ideas that I abandon almost immediately because of laziness/lack of discipline/self-esteem issues without the full weight of my sparkling yet self-effacing wordplay?
Certainly not the upwards of five people who come here every so often. That half-dozen or so people come here with certain expectations, and one of those expectations is pointless and unnecessary verbosity as I focus the microscope onto the minutiae of my trite and meaningless existence, mining each dust mote experience for some tiny piece of comedic or observational gold.
Or something.
The point is, for someone who once aspired to be a writer, I really don’t do a hell of a lot of actual writing other than what you see here, and so even though there isn’t a lot of substance here, I feel the need to cram it chock full of style (such as it is).
So feel free to skim to your heart’s content as you search – in vain – for that little gem of profundity that may be (but probably isn’t) buried somewhere under a mountain of excess verbiage and metaphors that are so mixed up that they’ve come to resemble that grayish mass that multiple colors of Play-Do become once they’ve been mashed together too many times.
Or something.
In any case, let’s give a warm welcome back to the standard Threshold entry, shall we?
This morning found me, awake, lying in bed trying to not be.
Awake, that is.
I really didn’t feel like getting up, as it was my intention to make this day the most spectacular waste of time since…well, since yesterday, but the point is that I was going to try to sleep as long as possible and to accomplish absolutely nothing.
As I was lying there drifting I became aware of the sound of my cell phone ringing somewhere off in the distance. I got up to answer it, even though I was fully expecting it to just be that weird Spanish recording I keep getting (I got that about an hour later on my VoIP phone).
The Caller ID said it was Scott, but it turned out to be Stacy, who proceeded to bully me into agreeing to see a 10:00 showing of Superman Returns tonight with Scott.
I really didn’t want to go see that movie. Despite the fact that it looks to be visually stunning (retarded gay version of the costume aside), I just don’t see why Brian Singer felt the need to make a sequel to movies that, quite frankly, weren’t that good to begin with, especially considering the tremendous amount of material that’s been published in the 20+ years since Superman II (this movie ignores III and IV, and rightly so), most of it vastly superior than the cheese-fests that were the two Richard Donner movies.
That II apparently wasn’t the movie that Donner wanted to make, and that he’s not credited as its director is largely irrelevant, though it’s my understanding that Singer made this movie almost as though it were Superman II, though he did pick and choose those concepts from II that had the Donner seal of approval.
From everything that I’ve read, this movie is the cinematic equivalent of Singer getting on his knees and giving Donner a long, sloppy blow job.
Given that the character is nearly 70 years old, has been re-imagined and reinvented countless times within the comics, and has had some kind of incarnation in every conceivable media, it’s impossible to say that there is any one canonical version of Superman.
The basics, though, have always been there, in pretty much every version: rocketed as infant to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton, raised by simple, decent farm folk who instilled an innate sense of right and wrong in him, has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way, and so on.
Did the original movies have those basics covered? Sure, which, by extension means that this “sequel” should as well.
But it’s what they did in filling in the blanks left by those basics that bothered me, and knowing that that same filler will be back nearly 30 years later (indeed, much of it, including the role of Jor-El, is lifted directly from the movies) really, really bothers me.
What’s even more bothersome is that Singer used the movies as the only source material. Period. Putting aside any complaints I have about the content of the movies, which are a matter of personal preference, it seems to me that such short-sightedness is a slap in the face of every creator outside of the movies who has left a mark on the character and his mythology.
Not only is that disrespectful to the creators, it’s disrespectful to the fans (like yours truly) who have a strong investment in and love for the other versions of the character (For the record, “my” vision of Superman is the one from the late 80s to early 90s, with John Byrne’s basic ideas – which greatly simplified the character and adapted him to the times – later fleshed out by the people who took over for him.) .
I might not be so bothered by this if it were a matter of him creating is own vision of the character, but he’s not doing that; he’s attempting to recreate one person’s vision of the character.
*Sigh*
I’ve gone on about this way too much, and yet I could go on and on and on. I mean, I haven’t even mentioned the whole Lois being a single mother thing, and I could really go on (and off) about that particular desecration of a beloved character (For the record, I’m not finding fault with single mothers, I’m just finding fault with turning Lois into one.)
Ordinarily I’d try a little harder to keep an open mind about something like this, but the problem here is that Superman really is important to me (And I don’t care how that sounds or what anyone thinks about that), and everything I’ve heard and read is telling me that this is just another disservice to the character.
Which is why I wasn’t going to see it until I was tricked into agreeing to do so while I was still half-asleep in a bit of super-villainy worthy of Lex Luthor (the real one, not the smarmy joke of a Luthor played by Gene Hackman, whom I’m sure Kevin Spacey had a blast channeling in order to play a cheesy, over the top character. For the record, I like both Hackman and Spacey and respect their skill as actors, but the movie version of Lex…yechh.). Curse you, Stacy and your early-morning hypnotic powers!
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have (a lot) more to say about it after I’ve seen it. In the meantime, I’m sure it’ll look cool (except for all of the cheesy plastic crystals and the recycled Brando footage and the gay, retarded costume), and if I shut my brain off and gag my inner fanboy I’ll be able to enjoy it for the visual elements.
After all, I will admit that it looks really cool in the trailer when the bullet hits him in the eye and flattens and bounces away and he doesn’t even blink…
Some time ago I heard that the ideal way to sleep is along the North-South line of the compass, with your head to the North.
Do I believe this? Not really, as I can’t see what possible difference it could make, but after years of sleeping with my head either to the East or to the South and feeling like crap most mornings when I wake up, I figured it was worth a shot.
The only problem with that was the fact that in my bedroom the North wall is where my closet is located.
Still, I wanted to give it a shot, and realizing that there’s no one who will be likely to see how stupid it looks, it didn’t really matter if I had my bed set up in the middle of the floor not against any wall.
The verdict? I’m not sure that it makes a difference. I’ll give it a few more nights before I decide.
The one real advantage, though, is that the window is directly below me, so when there’s a cool breeze (as there was last night), I get the full benefit of it. Lacking a breeze, I can set up my box fan in the window, so that much of sleeping along the Cardinal directions in this fashion is beneficial.
At this point you’re probably beginning to miss the condensed entries, so I guess I’ll wrap things up by mentioning that Scott has moved his MySpace blog onto Blogger.
Check out his blog, My Inanity.
(What a loser. He doesn’t even know how to spell insanity. What? Oh. Never mind. At least that picture he has of himself is pretty cool. Some artistic genius must have done that for him. I bet it cost a fortune!)
After all, who wants to read about my life being a series of non-events that inspire impotent rage and my half-baked ideas that I abandon almost immediately because of laziness/lack of discipline/self-esteem issues without the full weight of my sparkling yet self-effacing wordplay?
Certainly not the upwards of five people who come here every so often. That half-dozen or so people come here with certain expectations, and one of those expectations is pointless and unnecessary verbosity as I focus the microscope onto the minutiae of my trite and meaningless existence, mining each dust mote experience for some tiny piece of comedic or observational gold.
Or something.
The point is, for someone who once aspired to be a writer, I really don’t do a hell of a lot of actual writing other than what you see here, and so even though there isn’t a lot of substance here, I feel the need to cram it chock full of style (such as it is).
So feel free to skim to your heart’s content as you search – in vain – for that little gem of profundity that may be (but probably isn’t) buried somewhere under a mountain of excess verbiage and metaphors that are so mixed up that they’ve come to resemble that grayish mass that multiple colors of Play-Do become once they’ve been mashed together too many times.
Or something.
In any case, let’s give a warm welcome back to the standard Threshold entry, shall we?
This morning found me, awake, lying in bed trying to not be.
Awake, that is.
I really didn’t feel like getting up, as it was my intention to make this day the most spectacular waste of time since…well, since yesterday, but the point is that I was going to try to sleep as long as possible and to accomplish absolutely nothing.
As I was lying there drifting I became aware of the sound of my cell phone ringing somewhere off in the distance. I got up to answer it, even though I was fully expecting it to just be that weird Spanish recording I keep getting (I got that about an hour later on my VoIP phone).
The Caller ID said it was Scott, but it turned out to be Stacy, who proceeded to bully me into agreeing to see a 10:00 showing of Superman Returns tonight with Scott.
I really didn’t want to go see that movie. Despite the fact that it looks to be visually stunning (retarded gay version of the costume aside), I just don’t see why Brian Singer felt the need to make a sequel to movies that, quite frankly, weren’t that good to begin with, especially considering the tremendous amount of material that’s been published in the 20+ years since Superman II (this movie ignores III and IV, and rightly so), most of it vastly superior than the cheese-fests that were the two Richard Donner movies.
That II apparently wasn’t the movie that Donner wanted to make, and that he’s not credited as its director is largely irrelevant, though it’s my understanding that Singer made this movie almost as though it were Superman II, though he did pick and choose those concepts from II that had the Donner seal of approval.
From everything that I’ve read, this movie is the cinematic equivalent of Singer getting on his knees and giving Donner a long, sloppy blow job.
Given that the character is nearly 70 years old, has been re-imagined and reinvented countless times within the comics, and has had some kind of incarnation in every conceivable media, it’s impossible to say that there is any one canonical version of Superman.
The basics, though, have always been there, in pretty much every version: rocketed as infant to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton, raised by simple, decent farm folk who instilled an innate sense of right and wrong in him, has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way, and so on.
Did the original movies have those basics covered? Sure, which, by extension means that this “sequel” should as well.
But it’s what they did in filling in the blanks left by those basics that bothered me, and knowing that that same filler will be back nearly 30 years later (indeed, much of it, including the role of Jor-El, is lifted directly from the movies) really, really bothers me.
What’s even more bothersome is that Singer used the movies as the only source material. Period. Putting aside any complaints I have about the content of the movies, which are a matter of personal preference, it seems to me that such short-sightedness is a slap in the face of every creator outside of the movies who has left a mark on the character and his mythology.
Not only is that disrespectful to the creators, it’s disrespectful to the fans (like yours truly) who have a strong investment in and love for the other versions of the character (For the record, “my” vision of Superman is the one from the late 80s to early 90s, with John Byrne’s basic ideas – which greatly simplified the character and adapted him to the times – later fleshed out by the people who took over for him.) .
I might not be so bothered by this if it were a matter of him creating is own vision of the character, but he’s not doing that; he’s attempting to recreate one person’s vision of the character.
*Sigh*
I’ve gone on about this way too much, and yet I could go on and on and on. I mean, I haven’t even mentioned the whole Lois being a single mother thing, and I could really go on (and off) about that particular desecration of a beloved character (For the record, I’m not finding fault with single mothers, I’m just finding fault with turning Lois into one.)
Ordinarily I’d try a little harder to keep an open mind about something like this, but the problem here is that Superman really is important to me (And I don’t care how that sounds or what anyone thinks about that), and everything I’ve heard and read is telling me that this is just another disservice to the character.
Which is why I wasn’t going to see it until I was tricked into agreeing to do so while I was still half-asleep in a bit of super-villainy worthy of Lex Luthor (the real one, not the smarmy joke of a Luthor played by Gene Hackman, whom I’m sure Kevin Spacey had a blast channeling in order to play a cheesy, over the top character. For the record, I like both Hackman and Spacey and respect their skill as actors, but the movie version of Lex…yechh.). Curse you, Stacy and your early-morning hypnotic powers!
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have (a lot) more to say about it after I’ve seen it. In the meantime, I’m sure it’ll look cool (except for all of the cheesy plastic crystals and the recycled Brando footage and the gay, retarded costume), and if I shut my brain off and gag my inner fanboy I’ll be able to enjoy it for the visual elements.
After all, I will admit that it looks really cool in the trailer when the bullet hits him in the eye and flattens and bounces away and he doesn’t even blink…
Some time ago I heard that the ideal way to sleep is along the North-South line of the compass, with your head to the North.
Do I believe this? Not really, as I can’t see what possible difference it could make, but after years of sleeping with my head either to the East or to the South and feeling like crap most mornings when I wake up, I figured it was worth a shot.
The only problem with that was the fact that in my bedroom the North wall is where my closet is located.
Still, I wanted to give it a shot, and realizing that there’s no one who will be likely to see how stupid it looks, it didn’t really matter if I had my bed set up in the middle of the floor not against any wall.
The verdict? I’m not sure that it makes a difference. I’ll give it a few more nights before I decide.
The one real advantage, though, is that the window is directly below me, so when there’s a cool breeze (as there was last night), I get the full benefit of it. Lacking a breeze, I can set up my box fan in the window, so that much of sleeping along the Cardinal directions in this fashion is beneficial.
At this point you’re probably beginning to miss the condensed entries, so I guess I’ll wrap things up by mentioning that Scott has moved his MySpace blog onto Blogger.
Check out his blog, My Inanity.
(What a loser. He doesn’t even know how to spell insanity. What? Oh. Never mind. At least that picture he has of himself is pretty cool. Some artistic genius must have done that for him. I bet it cost a fortune!)
Monday, June 26, 2006
Threshold Digest Vol. 2
My bitterly sarcastic and caustic sense of humor drives people away at least as much as it attracts them. My disdain for pets and pet ownership makes people think that I’m peculiar at best and a heartless, inhuman monster at worst. My day was long, boring, and humid. I read a little. I downloaded The Venture Bros. season premiere and laughed. I was too lazy to call about switching cable companies. This gag will get old in a hurry.
Threshold Digest
Via e-mail, my “friend” who calls himself “Zalfiro” informed me that my posts of late have been really long and that he’s been simply “skimming through them.”
(It seems that size does matter. And here I thought he wasn’t a size queen.)
While it seems to me that over-long posts are hardly a recent phenomenon, I decided that I should take this observation to heart, as the views of one reader of Threshold represent a significant percentage of the overall readership.
The question, then, becomes “What do I do?”
How do I make my posts shorter? Avoid parenthetical asides? Wrt wtht vwls?
Skip every other word? How I that?
Write in cyberspeak? U hav 2b kidding.
Then a thought occurred to me: pretty much nothing actually happens in my life.
This was more of an epiphany (leaving out “big words” was another option I considered) than it might seem, given that for almost two years I’ve been stretching out a whole lot of nothing into these too-long posts that need to be skimmed over in order to be made manageable.
I paired that realization with some of the more entertaining of Gail Simone’s YABS entries I read over the weekend: “Condensed Classics,” Reader’s Digest versions of popular comic books.
So today, after way too much of an introduction that you’ve probably skimmed over anyway, I present, Condensed Threshold.
Nothing happened and I got angry about it. I’m lonely and I want everyone to leave me alone, which shows that I’m complex and conflicted. I need to get laid. The dog barked.
(It seems that size does matter. And here I thought he wasn’t a size queen.)
While it seems to me that over-long posts are hardly a recent phenomenon, I decided that I should take this observation to heart, as the views of one reader of Threshold represent a significant percentage of the overall readership.
The question, then, becomes “What do I do?”
How do I make my posts shorter? Avoid parenthetical asides? Wrt wtht vwls?
Skip every other word? How I that?
Write in cyberspeak? U hav 2b kidding.
Then a thought occurred to me: pretty much nothing actually happens in my life.
This was more of an epiphany (leaving out “big words” was another option I considered) than it might seem, given that for almost two years I’ve been stretching out a whole lot of nothing into these too-long posts that need to be skimmed over in order to be made manageable.
I paired that realization with some of the more entertaining of Gail Simone’s YABS entries I read over the weekend: “Condensed Classics,” Reader’s Digest versions of popular comic books.
So today, after way too much of an introduction that you’ve probably skimmed over anyway, I present, Condensed Threshold.
Nothing happened and I got angry about it. I’m lonely and I want everyone to leave me alone, which shows that I’m complex and conflicted. I need to get laid. The dog barked.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
No...Words...Choking...On...Rage
It's raining right now, just like it has been most of the day.
The new season of The Venture Bros. premiered tonight at 10:30.
These two things would seem to be unrelated, and by all rights, should be unrelated.
However, I have the world's crappiest cable company, one that seems to consist of setting up a DirecTV satellite dish and feeding programming out to the various units they provide service for.
Owing to that fact, and the fact that it's raining, approximately one quarter of the channels I'm supposed to receive all say "Error! Satellite Signal Lost. Attempting to retrieve signal."
They've said this for hours and didn't stop saying this even when it stopped raining for a little while.
Among the channels that I'm not receiving, naturally, because we all know how the Universe feels about me, is Cartoon Network, home of the fucking Venture Bros.
Tomorrow I'm calling Adelphia to find out if I was lied to when I was told that I had to use this cable company, as I keep getting Adelphia offers in the mail.
This is exactly why I try to avoid looking forward to things, especially things that I have to look forward to for eighteen months.
The new season of The Venture Bros. premiered tonight at 10:30.
These two things would seem to be unrelated, and by all rights, should be unrelated.
However, I have the world's crappiest cable company, one that seems to consist of setting up a DirecTV satellite dish and feeding programming out to the various units they provide service for.
Owing to that fact, and the fact that it's raining, approximately one quarter of the channels I'm supposed to receive all say "Error! Satellite Signal Lost. Attempting to retrieve signal."
They've said this for hours and didn't stop saying this even when it stopped raining for a little while.
Among the channels that I'm not receiving, naturally, because we all know how the Universe feels about me, is Cartoon Network, home of the fucking Venture Bros.
Tomorrow I'm calling Adelphia to find out if I was lied to when I was told that I had to use this cable company, as I keep getting Adelphia offers in the mail.
This is exactly why I try to avoid looking forward to things, especially things that I have to look forward to for eighteen months.
I AM Sorry...Sorry I Didn't Find YABS Sooner
Sometime around 2:30 in the morning someone slammed a car door then hit the “lock” button, resulting in a honking horn (it couldn’t have been the young couple, as there was only one honk), which prompted the dog upstairs to start baking in one of those unusual moments in which he was actually barking at something.
After considerable effort I managed to get back to sleep, woken again at 4:10 by my alarm going off with the strains of a guitar and the sound of Type O Negative’s Peter Steele singing “I don’t wanna be. I don’t wanna be me. I don’t wanna be me anymore.”
In response I said, “I don’t wanna be me, either…or at least, I don’t wanna be me awake at 4:10 in the fucking morning,” and so, saying to hell with the idea of working out before work, I reset the alarm for 5:00 and rolled back over, only to be instantly confronted with more guitar and more of Peter Steele singing.
“Whu…?” I said, annoyed that my resetting of the alarm obviously hadn’t worked.
It was with even greater annoyance that I looked at the clock and saw that it said 5:00.
Shortest damn 50 minutes of my life.
So now here I am at work for my last Sunday. Soon Sunday will be the new Monday, and Thursday will be the new Friday, although technically for me Friday is Monday, and Monday has pretty much been Saturday, which means that Thursday will now be Monday and Sunday will be…Tuesday? Something like that.
I stopped reading comic books on a regular basis sometime around 11 years ago, for a variety of reasons, most notable of which (or a the very least, easiest to explain) was the fact that at the time the nearest comic book store was 100 miles away.
Sure, I’d occasionally pick up the odd graphic novel or trade paperback collection here and there, but I wasn’t reading any monthly titles.
So, given that I was no longer really a member of fandom, I took little or no notice of manner in which fandom had made the move to the Internet.
It was only very recently, through the discovery of the OYATM posts on Usenet, that I got back into the world of comics (even if it’s the world of comic as it was 12 to 15 months ago), and became aware of some of the new talent that had come along during my absence, or even the familiar names that were popping up in unexpected places (Grant Morrison writing JLA and X-Men? Was this a parallel universe? Bizarro World? That Judd guy from one of the seaons of MTV’s The Real World was writing Green Arrow? WTF?).
The names that soon came to stand out for me were Ed Brubaker, Devin Grayson, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, and, last, but certainly not least (especially considering that she’s the whole point of this too-long set up), Gail Simone.
I’ve enjoyed Gail’s work on Birds of Prey a great deal, and look forward to the point in OYATM in which we finally get to her work on Action and Villains United.
(For the record, she wrote a great episode of Justice League Unlimited featuring two of the Birds of Prey characters.)
However, before she started writing well-crafted stories with smart, snappy dialogue and fully-realized characterization, she wrote an online humor column called You’ll All Be Sorry.
It was actually YABS that helped her move from hairdressing comics fan writing funny articles in her spare time to best-selling comic book writer.
(Ironically enough, Birds of Prey, the book she would eventually take over, was a frequent target for her wit)
If I’d been paying attention to what was going on in the world of fandom on the Internet, I might have discovered this column – which frequently came close to making trail mix, or whatever else happened to be in my mouth at the time, come shooting out through my nose – 7 years ago rather than last week.
If that had been the case, I would have had something to eagerly look forward to every week from 1999 to 2001.
Of course, given that for a good portion of that time I was lost in a drunken ISP-less haze I wouldn’t have been likely to be able to read it anyway.
And of course, I wouldn’t have had the collected archives to read throughout this long, slow weekend, providing my only salvation from the eyelid-drooping tedium.
I can’t honestly recommend that any of you go over and read the YABS archives because, even though they contain some of the funniest material I’ve encountered this side of Michelle Collins, I know that most of you are not comic book fans, and as such won’t get most of it.
Which is a shame, I think, but oh well.
(Of my regular readership, Scott is the only one whom I know is a comic book fan, and, like me, he spent most of the weekend devouring the YABS archives, so there’s no point in telling him about it now.)
The point of this all, though, is that Gail Simone = my latest crush (despite minor obstacles such as a husband, a son [possibly more kids; I only know for sure about the son], and two dogs).
Her blog is also entertaining, though a little light on content, and most of the content there is about, not surprisingly, comics and the comics industry, but it’s still worth checking out.
Anyway, a big thanks to Gail for helping to make my weekend a lot less boring.
And if you ever decide to lose the husband and the dogs, look me up. We’ll figure out something to do with the kid(s).
Where The Hell Did That Come From Department:
Speaking of dogs (if only parenthetically), the other day I was sitting around listening to the dog upstairs bark. It had been about an hour since its owner had left and it’d first started barking.
I was sitting there fantasizing about killing the dog (anyone who’s read Watchmen can probably imagine exactly what I was thinking about doing to it), when, as usual, I reminded myself that I would feel incredibly guilty afterwards if I were to kill the dog, and that, in fact, I was beginning to feel guilty for even thinking about it, despite how much I wish the thing would just shut the hell up and accept the fact that the bitch (I felt guilty for thinking of her as a bitch, too) is just going to keep on abandoning it every day like she does every goddamn day of its miserable goddamn life the way she has no doubt been doing since long before I moved in.
At that point I began thinking, as I often do in my more charitable moments, about just how miserable the dog’s life really is. I mean, it sits there alone all day railing against its loneliness, howling its misery to an uncaring world.
Are he and I really all that different?
I’m not so sure.
Wait, yes I am; we’re totally different. For one thing, eventually she comes back to him every night and takes away his loneliness, whereas I never have a reason to run around and piss myself from excitement (which isn’t to say that I don’t do that).
For another, he’s a fucking dog.
Anyway, while caught in the throes of this moment of empathy, I hit upon a mucually beneficial solution to my problem, a mutually beneficial dirty hippie solution.
I could offer my services as a free dog-sitter.
After all, I’m home all day most days, and I could provide him with the reassuring companionship he so desperately needs, which would stop all the barking, howling, and whining, and maybe, just maybe, looking into those sad, knowing canine eyes might melt my cold, cold heart and help heal my wounded inner child.
It would be the perfect solution…if it weren’t for the fact that I hate that fucking dog, I’m allergic to pet dander, and my wounded inner child can sit his ass in the corner and bleed quietly, suck it up, and leave me the hell alone.
Nothing is melting my cold, cold heart, dammit!
Besides, as soon as I considered the notion of dog-sitting, the idea of taking him for a walk and letting go of his leash and throwing a ball onto the bypass popped into my head, and I was back to where I’d started.
Writing this is taking much longer than it should have, and I have fewer than two hours to go on my last Sunday, so I suppose I should pretend to do something work-like.
After considerable effort I managed to get back to sleep, woken again at 4:10 by my alarm going off with the strains of a guitar and the sound of Type O Negative’s Peter Steele singing “I don’t wanna be. I don’t wanna be me. I don’t wanna be me anymore.”
In response I said, “I don’t wanna be me, either…or at least, I don’t wanna be me awake at 4:10 in the fucking morning,” and so, saying to hell with the idea of working out before work, I reset the alarm for 5:00 and rolled back over, only to be instantly confronted with more guitar and more of Peter Steele singing.
“Whu…?” I said, annoyed that my resetting of the alarm obviously hadn’t worked.
It was with even greater annoyance that I looked at the clock and saw that it said 5:00.
Shortest damn 50 minutes of my life.
So now here I am at work for my last Sunday. Soon Sunday will be the new Monday, and Thursday will be the new Friday, although technically for me Friday is Monday, and Monday has pretty much been Saturday, which means that Thursday will now be Monday and Sunday will be…Tuesday? Something like that.
I stopped reading comic books on a regular basis sometime around 11 years ago, for a variety of reasons, most notable of which (or a the very least, easiest to explain) was the fact that at the time the nearest comic book store was 100 miles away.
Sure, I’d occasionally pick up the odd graphic novel or trade paperback collection here and there, but I wasn’t reading any monthly titles.
So, given that I was no longer really a member of fandom, I took little or no notice of manner in which fandom had made the move to the Internet.
It was only very recently, through the discovery of the OYATM posts on Usenet, that I got back into the world of comics (even if it’s the world of comic as it was 12 to 15 months ago), and became aware of some of the new talent that had come along during my absence, or even the familiar names that were popping up in unexpected places (Grant Morrison writing JLA and X-Men? Was this a parallel universe? Bizarro World? That Judd guy from one of the seaons of MTV’s The Real World was writing Green Arrow? WTF?).
The names that soon came to stand out for me were Ed Brubaker, Devin Grayson, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, and, last, but certainly not least (especially considering that she’s the whole point of this too-long set up), Gail Simone.
I’ve enjoyed Gail’s work on Birds of Prey a great deal, and look forward to the point in OYATM in which we finally get to her work on Action and Villains United.
(For the record, she wrote a great episode of Justice League Unlimited featuring two of the Birds of Prey characters.)
However, before she started writing well-crafted stories with smart, snappy dialogue and fully-realized characterization, she wrote an online humor column called You’ll All Be Sorry.
It was actually YABS that helped her move from hairdressing comics fan writing funny articles in her spare time to best-selling comic book writer.
(Ironically enough, Birds of Prey, the book she would eventually take over, was a frequent target for her wit)
If I’d been paying attention to what was going on in the world of fandom on the Internet, I might have discovered this column – which frequently came close to making trail mix, or whatever else happened to be in my mouth at the time, come shooting out through my nose – 7 years ago rather than last week.
If that had been the case, I would have had something to eagerly look forward to every week from 1999 to 2001.
Of course, given that for a good portion of that time I was lost in a drunken ISP-less haze I wouldn’t have been likely to be able to read it anyway.
And of course, I wouldn’t have had the collected archives to read throughout this long, slow weekend, providing my only salvation from the eyelid-drooping tedium.
I can’t honestly recommend that any of you go over and read the YABS archives because, even though they contain some of the funniest material I’ve encountered this side of Michelle Collins, I know that most of you are not comic book fans, and as such won’t get most of it.
Which is a shame, I think, but oh well.
(Of my regular readership, Scott is the only one whom I know is a comic book fan, and, like me, he spent most of the weekend devouring the YABS archives, so there’s no point in telling him about it now.)
The point of this all, though, is that Gail Simone = my latest crush (despite minor obstacles such as a husband, a son [possibly more kids; I only know for sure about the son], and two dogs).
Her blog is also entertaining, though a little light on content, and most of the content there is about, not surprisingly, comics and the comics industry, but it’s still worth checking out.
Anyway, a big thanks to Gail for helping to make my weekend a lot less boring.
And if you ever decide to lose the husband and the dogs, look me up. We’ll figure out something to do with the kid(s).
Where The Hell Did That Come From Department:
Speaking of dogs (if only parenthetically), the other day I was sitting around listening to the dog upstairs bark. It had been about an hour since its owner had left and it’d first started barking.
I was sitting there fantasizing about killing the dog (anyone who’s read Watchmen can probably imagine exactly what I was thinking about doing to it), when, as usual, I reminded myself that I would feel incredibly guilty afterwards if I were to kill the dog, and that, in fact, I was beginning to feel guilty for even thinking about it, despite how much I wish the thing would just shut the hell up and accept the fact that the bitch (I felt guilty for thinking of her as a bitch, too) is just going to keep on abandoning it every day like she does every goddamn day of its miserable goddamn life the way she has no doubt been doing since long before I moved in.
At that point I began thinking, as I often do in my more charitable moments, about just how miserable the dog’s life really is. I mean, it sits there alone all day railing against its loneliness, howling its misery to an uncaring world.
Are he and I really all that different?
I’m not so sure.
Wait, yes I am; we’re totally different. For one thing, eventually she comes back to him every night and takes away his loneliness, whereas I never have a reason to run around and piss myself from excitement (which isn’t to say that I don’t do that).
For another, he’s a fucking dog.
Anyway, while caught in the throes of this moment of empathy, I hit upon a mucually beneficial solution to my problem, a mutually beneficial dirty hippie solution.
I could offer my services as a free dog-sitter.
After all, I’m home all day most days, and I could provide him with the reassuring companionship he so desperately needs, which would stop all the barking, howling, and whining, and maybe, just maybe, looking into those sad, knowing canine eyes might melt my cold, cold heart and help heal my wounded inner child.
It would be the perfect solution…if it weren’t for the fact that I hate that fucking dog, I’m allergic to pet dander, and my wounded inner child can sit his ass in the corner and bleed quietly, suck it up, and leave me the hell alone.
Nothing is melting my cold, cold heart, dammit!
Besides, as soon as I considered the notion of dog-sitting, the idea of taking him for a walk and letting go of his leash and throwing a ball onto the bypass popped into my head, and I was back to where I’d started.
Writing this is taking much longer than it should have, and I have fewer than two hours to go on my last Sunday, so I suppose I should pretend to do something work-like.
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